


I Have No Fear Of Depths

by Patronoftheravens



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Elias is a bastard, I really like writing kissing, Kissing, Lots of kissing, M/M, Peter is Touch Starved and Lonely bc that's his patron, peter is also a bastard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21947947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patronoftheravens/pseuds/Patronoftheravens
Summary: Peter is touch starved and lonely. Big shock. Let's get some Lonelyeyes fic going. I'm bad at summaries but really great at writing.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 12
Kudos: 153





	1. White Noise

**Author's Note:**

> Sup. Merry Christmas bc this is going up Christmas Eve. I was bored and wanted to write Lonelyeyes and kissing. Here you go. Leave a comment if you like it bc that makes me a happy author. -Gamma

The only downside, well there were many downsides to selling yourself to The Lonely, but the only downside that occasionally latched its bitter cold claws into Peter was the apathy. Perhaps apathy is too strong a word. It’s more a numbness, he thinks, a slow freezing of his extremities before the chill touches his heart. Most of the time he doesn’t feel it. Most of the time he exists in the perpetual fog that drifts about his feet, uncaring for the ice nestled in his ribs. 

It’s frustrating, the numbness. It isn’t the pins and needles you get when you cut the blood flow from a limb. No, that you can shake out with enough movement. This is deeper, colder than that. At least with the staticy fuzz in your limbs, you still feel  _ something _ . This numbness was near maddening. 

He’d thought he’d grown used to it by this point. Ages spent at sea with nothing but the lap of waves, silent crew, and creak of  _ The Tundra _ ’s timbers for company harden a man to the ever-present isolation. Aboard  _ The Tundra _ , he manages to exist purely alone, without longing, without that nagging desire for human contact. Hmp. Human contact. Is it fair to even call it that at this point with his humanity so far removed? Is it fair to still call it his when he cast to the fog like so many hapless sailors? Sacrificed all in the name of a patron devoted to feeding off the solitude and the fear. He condemned so many to a hopeless quarantine, wandering amidst sea-fog and the empty, lifeless sea and he felt nothing for it. Feels nothing for it. No sympathy or regret clutches at his gut. No sorrow worms into his heart. He doesn’t even feel joy or any form of satisfaction. There is no pleasure for him in service to The Lonely. There is nothing but the numbness.

It only rarely comes to a head. Like he would do for so many things, Peter would push it down or aside and simply work through it. An avatar is exceedingly busy even if they serve something as ambiguous and nebulous as The Lonely. Business occupies him for a time. It would occupy him for about two years, perhaps a decade if he kept it up and was exceedingly fortunate. Yet still, the ache for feeling  _ something _ sits oppressive and thick in his chest and only sinks heavier, taking on more and more water.

  
  


Peter doesn’t mean to intrude upon Elias. He certainly doesn’t even mean to end up in the Magnus Institute but here he is, somewhere in the archives. It’s still quiet. Nothing moves. It must be late, or early. He doesn’t care. The lights are on, which means that someone is in the archives. He steps forward, letting the sole of his shoe very deliberately tap a single, quiet note on the wooden floors of the archives. A breath. A beat. The familiar prickly sensation starts in the back of his neck; the feeling of someone’s eyes on him. It’s not as strong as it usually is. Another step, deliberately placed, as if he were emerging from hiding. In some ways, he was. The Lonely’s fog clings persistently to him if he’s not careful. The feeling intensifies. So now he has his attention. Now Elias can see him clearly. 

A small smile curls the edges of his lips. It must be late. The insistent feathering at the back of his neck is...gentle almost, fatigued. In the middle of the day, Peter finds it almost oppressive and he’d rather stay within his fog bank than let Elias have his eye on him. He half considers pulling the fog back over himself that he might walk unnoticed but that’s merely an old habit. His footsteps make no further noise as he strolls down the dimly lit corridors. He only needed to announce his presence after all. He knows Elias is watching him. 

Eventually, he reaches the door labeled neatly with ‘Elias Bouchard’. He knocks once before it swings open. He only needs to ever knock once. 

“Peter,” Elias’ voice is quiet, haggard almost. Almost. Elias Bouchard would never let his voice betray fatigue, “It’s late.”

“I don’t keep a timepiece on me. You know this.”

“It wasn’t an accusation.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you then. Might I ask what you’re doing at this hour?”  
A sigh, a slight prickling again over his neck before Elias answers, “Maintaining my archives. What else do I do?”

“I was just asking to make small talk. How late is it?”

“It’s almost ten. Why are you here, Peter?”

A small smile teases its way at the corners of Peter’s mouth, “you mean to tell me you haven’t divined it from me already?”

Elias’ face betrays nothing, still firm. Green eyes flick over Peter. The prickling intensifies, spreading over his scalp, “Would you like to come in?” He steps aside, holding the door open. Peter takes the invitation and strides in, hands in the pockets of the long, navy wool coat. 

“I’d offer you tea, but I’m afraid I don’t keep any in the Archives.”

“Of course. It’d be a shame to ruin the integrity of documents you keep here by a careless mistake,” Peter turns to set his coat on the small rack by the door. A wooden chair creaks behind him as Elias settles into it. A pen scratches on the notepad Peter knows is smack in the center of the antique desk. 

“You never answered my question, Peter.” A blunt statement punctuated by the cessation of the pen’s scribblings. Eyes bore into Peter’s spine then sweep upwards. That tingle at the base of his skull again creeps over his entire scalp until it becomes akin to many fingers, kneading and pressing at his scalp. It’s pleasant in a vulnerable way. He’s not entirely keen on being vulnerable, but this? This is something else. There is a sort of...eroticism in the vulnerable here, laying himself bare before the inescapable voyeurism of Elias and Beholding. Peter almost shuts him out, but just as he’s about to, the feeling stops. He turns to look at the source of the prying. This time, a smirk curls Elias’ lips, gleaming smugly in his pale green eyes.

“So you know then.”

“Oh, I  _ do _ know. You’ll forgive my expression, but I am rather intrigued how an avatar of The Lonely can feel...well, lonely.”

“It’s not loneliness, Elias. It’s more complicated than that.” He paces around to the other side of Elias’ desk and places his hands on each of the armrests so he can properly loom over the self-styled high priest of The Eye. Deep, cloudy blue eyes lock with the cold, calculating green, stolen from one head and placed in another. 

“Numbness, is it? You want me to make you  _ feel _ something, Peter.” They drift up to look to him with coyness and victory written in ink. 

Peter doesn’t grace him with an answer. He doesn’t feel the smug bastard merits it. When just as he expects to feel that damned prodding at his skull again, Elias instead grips him by the lapels of the thick waistcoat and pulls him down to lock lips with him. 

It is not, by any means, a gentle kiss. After all, if one is to evoke something in a man that has mired himself into numbness, perhaps lust or at the very least shock should do the trick. The grip on Peter’s waistcoat relaxes to a more gentle hold as Elias coaxes him closer, deeper into the kiss. Lips and mouths work against each other, Elias’ guiding the barest sighs of pleasure from Peter. As he kisses him, Peter feels those fingers, kneading at his scalp, reading all of the lustful heady thoughts bubbling up from the depths of his mind, picking the locks he so meticulously placed on each and every feeling he’d shut away. That vulnerability presses into his stomach, stokes a heat there and burns at his chest, his empty, numbed chest. Faintly, somewhere else, a clock ticks at the edge of Elias’ perception.

That horrible, aching numbness is lit alight with the heat of passion, burned away as Elias deftly licks into his mouth. His grip tightens on the armrests of the chair then relaxes as he breaks to suck in a gasping breath.

Elias’ mouth opens, half quirked in that smugly satisfied smirk before Peter kisses him again,  _ hard _ , pulling him into his mouth with one hand on that damned tie he keeps about his neck and the other gripping the back of his dark hair, tipping his head up. A gasp from Elias as their teeth clack together and one of Elias’ hands settles on Peter’s shoulder, the other still on the lapel of his waistcoat. 

When they break again, both of their breaths come in heavy pants. Elias releases Peter. Peter lets go of the tie. 

“Feeling less numb?” There’s still a lilt to Elias’ voice, a self-satisfied one, and Peter contemplates kissing the bastard again if only to have him shut up.

“I think you already know.”

“I do. And I know the answer to my next question.”

A beat. A moment of understanding between the flush on both of their faces and the cruel, calculating glint in Elias’ eyes. Peter answers with his grip returning to Elias’ tie and their mouths meet again, this time not stopping at just a mere kiss.


	2. Eyestrain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sup, this time Elias is the POV. Comment or Kudos if you liked it. Or if you didn't. Doesn't matter. Enjoy! - Gamma

Distantly, Elias knows that it’s 3 AM. The gentle tick, tick, tick of the clock behind him worms its way into his ears reminding his body that it still desperately needs sleep. He very pointedly clicks ‘send’ on an email to Mr. Edgar Montresor, head of the Usher Foundation. It’s nothing but business at this point, as much as Mr. Montresor irks Elias. Simple communications. While the Magnus Institute had better resources and more funding than their American cousins, The Usher Foundation had a much broader scope and when he needs to look into incursions of The Hunt, well, Mr. Montresor is more than willing and capable to lend a hand. 

He turns back from the computer, giving his tired eyes a rest from the omnipresent blue glow of the screen, and sets about organizing a small box of statements. They’d been sitting in the corner of his office, untouched, for a week now. He begins picking through them, ordering them by date. Sure, it’s supposed to be the archivists’ job but it brings his exhausted mind some peace. They’re fairly recent. Mostly from the last three years, but there’s a few errata in there. Three from 2001, one from 2008, an outlier from 1954, and two from 2010. Whoever had this box last was  _ most  _ careless. 

As he finishes replacing them into their box, now in the proper order, he becomes suddenly aware that there is someone outside of his door. The fact in itself that he knows it’s someone and not exactly who leaves it to be one specific person. Elias huffs, sets the box aside, and opens the door just before Peter knocks. 

“Why are you here?” He isn’t glaring per se, but the steely gaze he levels at Peter is usually enough to instill a sense of dread in lesser men.

Peter smiles amiably although it doesn’t reach his foggy eyes, “I could ask you the same thing. I believe it’s late, rather late in fact. I don’t keep track of time well, but there’s no one else in here and you didn’t even notice me until I was right outside your door. You’re distracted.”

Elias doesn’t move from the doorway, “Perhaps I didn’t think to notice anyone at this hour.”

“Isn’t that something,” Peter’s eyes roll up to the ceiling before fixing back on Elias, “you not thinking to notice something? As if you’re not the high priest of that big, paranoid eye.”

“What is it you need, Peter,” it’s not a question. It’s a statement with a demand under it, a demand and a threat;  _ Tell me before I do something we both regret. _

“That’s awful inhospitable of you, Elias. Besides, what could you do to me? Send some hunter after me? That lapdog you’ve recently recruited? She couldn’t find me if she actually were a bloodhound. No, I’m here because I feel that you’re a bit too…”

“Undisturbed.”

“Controlling. You need a break, or at the very least to relinquish some modicum of control. What time is it here, anyway?”

“Three sixteen in the morning.”

“I assumed in the morning. If it were the afternoon, I would have had the joy of vanishing one of your employees again.”

“I’ve asked you to stop that.”

“Do you really miss the library interns that much? I might be able to get one of them back for you.”

“Enough. You’re here because you want me to...relax?”

“That isn’t what I said but yes, I suppose so. Will you let me in?”

Elias locks eyes with Peter again, presses against his mind, trying to read into his intentions. Peter repels him with that awful, dog-whistle static and he winces. Peter pushes past him. 

“It is awful late,” says Peter, looking up at the damnably ticking clock, shrugging off his coat as if he didn’t bodily move past Elias. Although, it wasn’t a particularly intrusive move, much more akin to a fog bank rolling in than another human pushing past him. Most likely because Peter was something a bit left of human. They both were. “and you’re still here?”

“I’m always here. It’s the seat of my power.”

“You’re not. I’ve been to your flat, Elias.”

“It’s for appearances.”

“It has a bed that isn’t in a closet.”

“Your point?”

“Let go a moment, Elias,” Peter turns to look at him as he sits back at his desk. Elias doesn’t give him the same courtesy. He can see him anyway. He can see him until he suddenly disappears and hands cover his eyes. Elias stiffens.

“ _ Peter _ ,” a blade in his voice, laid bare in the still dimness of his office.

“Trust me, Elias. You don’t need to be in control all the time,” The hands over his eyes shift a moment and Elias is effectively blind. When he tries to see, to look past Peter’s hands, that awful dog-whistle sounds in his head and all he looks upon is a rolling bank of fog, “You’re trying to control me. From the moment you notice I’m here, you’re trying to  _ see  _ me,” Peter pauses a moment, waiting for a response. He receives nothing but Elias’ silent fury, near palpable through the still air. Peter smiles, “See? Not so bad is it? Not knowing and all,” he leans closer, lips barely brushing his ear, “you still seem awful nervous about this, Elias.”

“Why shouldn’t I be? You’ve rendered me effectively powerless. Not that I still couldn’t harm you of course.”

“You won’t,” he speaks with the confidence of a man that knows the lion he has on a leash, “Not yet at least,” he nearly purrs. It sends a shiver down Elias’ spine. Slowly, Peter removes his hands from Elias’ eyes, “Keep them closed,” a scoff, “You can still ‘see’ like this?”

“Of course,” Elias exhales as his sight returns. Still in his office, Peter an innocuous fuzz behind him, static on a camera. 

“Then I can’t have that, now can I?” That confident purr again. A hand once again over his eyes, calloused from years on a ship doing hard labor. Elias tenses through his shoulders and Peter’s other hand gently grips the back of his neck. It’s nothing but a reminder that Elias isn’t the one in control here. He’s faintly aware of the quiet tread of Peter’s boots moving around to his left side, more of the vibrations of them on the otherwise creaky wooden floors than the actual sound. The hands on his neck and over his eyes shift slightly with the new position, “You’re trusting me? That’s a new one for you, Elias.”

“I’m not trusting you, Peter, I’m tolerating your antics.”

“Antics?” A chuff of laughter to his left, “Amusing.”

“I don’t know what you have in mind, given that I can’t see you, so I’m simply waiting for you to act.”

“Would you like to dictate my actions then? Would you like to lay me bare with your Beholding-given sight and see everything going through my head, Elias? I can tell you what you’d see anyway. I can tell you everything I’d do to you now that I’ve rendered you sightless.”

A breath, a hitch in Elias’ chest, unbidden as desire pools in the pit of his stomach. He slides his eyes to the left under his closed, fogged lids. He can’t see Peter, but he’s there, as much as he tries to hide from Elias, now he isn’t, his confidence thrumming out as waves lick against a ship’s hull, “Then do it. Tell me, Peter.”

Peter laughs, a smug, simpering laugh that creaks with his voice, “I’d rather not. That’d be giving you control, wouldn’t it? Telling you what you want to hear as if you’ve compelled me. Hm, no. I don’t think so. I’d much rather show you,” with his hand still over his eyes, Peter coaxes Elias to stand. He doesn’t wrench him out of his chair, no, he coaxes his legs under him that he might still retain his control over him. Elias looks to where he assumes Peter’s face to be, even still blinded by the hand over his eyes. The other hand, Peter’s left, grips Elias by the lapel of his waistcoat and pulls him into a slow, methodical kiss. 

Elias can’t help that his own hands grip into the thick woolen jacket that he knows is navy blue, can’t help the gasp that flees his lungs, can’t help the sudden drumming of his heart beating against his sternum. The sigh that he breathes as Peter’s mouth gently takes him apart, undoes each stitch he put in his tightly-bound control, is the last straw before he gives in. He hates to admit that he practically melts under Peter’s meticulous attention, between the hand on his eyes and the other hand slowly undoing the buttons of his waistcoat before untying the carefully done windsor knot at his throat. 

They break with a gasp. Elias tries to regain some modicum of his composure, but it is lost at Peter’s insistent fingers sliding the topmost button free. He sighs through his teeth as he lets his head fall back.

“Would you let me, Elias?”

With some reluctance, he responds, “Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, Peter,” this time, the reluctance drops. 


End file.
